Deadline for the Red Needles Raffle is Midnight Eastern Tonight, and Heads Up! More Details About Future Drawings

Here's your last chance to win the red Signature Arts Needles. Go ahead and click and donate -- you know you wanna!  The raffle closes at midnight Eastern Time tonight, and the drawing will occur tomorrow.  As of this writing, we have 26 contestants, with a total of $930 raised since last Thursday, when I first started this raffle for the needles.  

After the needles have been drawn and the winner chosen, we will move on to Phase II of Red Scarf Fund Drive 2009, and I am putting out the call for more prize offerings.  We've got some good ones already, and we'd like more if you can offer them.  

Please send your prize offerings to the following email address:

redscarffund@gmail.com

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Here is an example of one of the early prize offerings just to whet your appetite:

Generously donated by our fabulous Joan, this box of fingering weight cashmere yarn, about 2,000 yards total, retails for approximately $250. Can you just IMAGINE the shawl (probably more than one!) or sweater, and a pair of cashmere socks for a very special someone -- or mitten liners or -- you name it -- that you could make with this?!

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Cookie will be my spreadsheet master this year.  She has quite a big pair of shoes to fill following Paula, who did such a tremendous job last year, but I am sure she is up to the challenge.  (Sweating under the pressure yet, Cookie? Hee.)

So here's what I would like you to do if you are going to donate a prize to offer in the next and final phase of our Red Scarf Fund drive for this year:

1.  Send a photo of your item(s) -- or if it's a gift certificate, just indicate that in an email addressed to REDSCARFFUND@GMAIL.COM, as indicated above.  Cookie or I will send you an acknowledgement email.  If you do not receive that email in a reasonable period of time (within a day) after you sent your email, please contact me at norma.knits@gmail.com. It could be that the email got lost or put in the spam box, so we will want to be sure to follow up on that.

2.  Please do not donate an item if you do not want to donate it in the true sense of the word. The way a raffle works is that yes, it is possible that one person might only donate $5 and win the cashmere, whereas someone else might donate $200 and get a $10 gift certificate, or someone could win more than once while another person doesn't win anything at all.  That is the thing about chance. It is random and the winner is indeed chosen by a computerized random number generator based on the number of entries.  

On that topic, when it comes time to donate money to the fund, please consider that you might not win anything. This is about the college kids and raising money for the fund that will help them, not about anything else. This little raffle on the side is simply that -- a little raffle on the side, to make things a little bit more fun and to generate enthusiasm for the project. I hope you will donate with no strings attached and no expectations of big thank yous, because they might not come, either from the people who have won your items in the raffle, or from the students. I hope that the act of generosity itself will be its own reward. Cookie and I will make every endeavor to thank you personally, but if we forget or your email gets lost, I hope you will realize that our thanks are implicit and genuine.

I hate to have to mention these things, but as you can probably guess, I'm doing it because it has been an issue in the past.  More about the rules of donating and entering later; this post is intended to be about making donations of prizes so that we can have a good raffle.  

3.  You will be responsible for mailing the item as soon as possible after being notified of the winner.  We will collect and relay the person's snail mail address for mailing.  I ask that you not send items to me, since I cannot handle all the postage (not to mention the time required) to send the many items out.

4.  Please be encouraged to donate small items or large.  For small items, we will do as Paula did last year, and I think it worked very well.  We will group related items together into "Sock Knitter's Package," "Lace Knitter's Package," "Spinner's Surprise," "Pink-Lover's Package," "Beginning Knitter's Gift Pack," or whatever.  We'll make it up as we go along.   

5.  Thank you!  

Now here's another important message:  I dropped the ball on a few people who offered prizes, because in the early stages I was not sure how much of a fund-raising effort we would run this year, and I cannot be sure I will find all your emails.  So for those of you who did that, would you mind duplicating your offer, sent to that redscarffund email address this time, so we can make double- and triple sure that we've logged it, etc.? Thanks again!  

In the past, we have raised approximately $20,000 during each of our fundraising efforts.  

Comments

[Carole]

So, at this point, would you rather have money or prizes?

[thea]

Hi Norma --

My red scarf is ready to send - I'll post a pic today and link up to you, but I also wanted to say I'd be glad to donate.

I can offer a free copy of any of my patterns plus a pack of vintage buttons. I can do one "pack" for each of my patterns - a Golden Vintage, a Nantucket Red, and the new patterns I'm out testing now - Short Lucky and Long Lucky for a total of 4 prizes. Each with buttons? There's pics on my Rav page if you want to see em......

Not as fab as a pack of cashmere, but hey, it's a start, right?

[Jean E.]

Twenty thousand dollars. Awesome! Let's do it again this year!

[marianne]

Our Fabulous Joan, indeed, mercy. and Thea? your offers are pretty damned fab!
(I'm also experiencing a wtf whump moment... sigh)(never mind) xoxoxox

[Doris]

Wow, what a nice raffle prize! It's a shame that you have to explain "raffle" to people...for crying out loud just make the donation. And if you are lucky enough to win a raffle for doing it, well then you are mighty lucky indeed!

[Marilla]

I have sent again my offer of prizes of hand dyed sock yarn and fiber, with photos. I hope it helps to raise a bit of money this year for those great young men and women who are working so hard to succeed. Thanks again for doing this.

And seriously, it is a really sad thing that you have to spell it out to people that a raffle is random in terms of who will win prizes. I think there are a lot of people being raised thinking that they are entitled to have things just because they exist. Kind of ironic when I would imagine that the people that they are donating the money to help have no such feeling of entitlement.

Anyway, I hope my little donation helps.

[Mary Fran]

I just love reading about the OFA's success stories. Makes me a little weepy... and so, so proud of them. For my brother and I, it wasn't if we were going to college, it was where. My husband and I will do the same for our children. But if my scarf and little donation will help someone who doesn't have the priveledged life I have, that's all the reward I need. Though the cashmere sure wouldn't suck :)

[Cookie]

I agree that it is a shame that such simple things have to be explained, but it's better to do it now than to deal with the dramaz later on. I blame those people who think every kid needs a trophy after every soccer game.

Thanks for updating everyone, The Norma!

[elizabeth a airhart]

thank you norma and every one else -back to the scarf

good night

[gayle]

I'll be dragging my scarf with me to Vt Sheep and Wool tomorrow - hopefully I'll get it finished!
Hurrah for the people who are donating money and double-hurrah for those donating prizes!